AgriCOOLture: How WHYFARM Blends Education and Entertainment to Engage Youth
TFF is the world’s next generation innovation engine for food and agriculture. We empower amazing young talents in all parts of the world and launch their breakthrough ideas into the world.
Over the past years, we have brought together a supportive global community like no other, united in a shared mission to feed 10 billion people by 2050. Now we are telling some of their stories!
Following last week’s mention of the reNature Foundation, we are now presenting you with WHYFARM – an amazing non-profit organization who started their changemaking journey at TFF. We call on you to help support the work we do by donating a small amount to our crowdfunding campaign – every little bit counts. And, this week, fifty percent of all donations made will go directly to WHYFARM!
Introducing WHYFARM, who are inspiring the next generation to become our future farmers
WHYFARM (We Help You-th Farm) is an NGO in Trinidad and Tobago that pioneers Agri-edutainment. Their mission is to promote the importance of sustainable agriculture among youth and children, build their capacities in agricultural entrepreneurship, and empower them to contribute to achieving global food and nutrition security by the year 2050. WHYFARM has developed the superhero AGRIman to inspire future feeders.
Alpha Sennon, Founder at WHYFARM, first found out about TFF online in 2013 and decided to participate in the TFF Challenge together with a group of fellow students from the University of the West Indies in Trinidad & Tobago, submitting an idea to collect food waste and redistributing it to people in need. Although their team didn’t make it to the Finalists, they still made it to the 2013 TFF Summit in Berlin, where they met TFF community members from around the world, and and since then have been active leaders in championing our shared missions.
“I remembered my first experience entering the TFF Summit venue in Berlin, I was immediately blown away by all the designs made from cardboard, by the energy, the speakers and all that we learned – it was out of this world.”
SUPPORT US
What benefits have you experienced?
Alpha first learned about the global challenge of feeding 10 billion people by 2050 at the 2013 TFF Summit and found his passion to educate youth. Support our shared mission!
When Alpha connected with other participants there, he was surprised to learn that their backgrounds ranged from mathematics, architecture and engineering to computer coding, designer and more. Questions that jumped in his head were ‘what are they doing here?’ and even ‘am I in the wrong place?’.
But, quickly his expectations to meet only people studying food, agriculture and nutrition sciences got wiped away, and he came to understand the importance of multidisciplinary thinking to solve big challenges like food security. As Alpha states, the TFF Summit “rocked my world and changed my thoughts forever”.
Alpha decided to become part of the TFF Community and started engaging as TFF Ambassador to promote the TFF Challenge in the Caribbean. Ever since, Alpha has been an integral part of TFF joining and contributing to the TFF Summit every year:
- In Lisbon in 2015 he gained the understanding that innovation is often about complementing and collaborating, not about reinventing. He summed up his experience in the poem “Taking Aim for a Moonshot”.
- In Zurich in 2016 he made more connections and prototyped his first idea for a food and nutrition superhero.
- In Amsterdam in 2017 he was invited to deliver the closing keynote, an inspirational and transforming speech where the world’s first agricultural superhero AGRIman made an appearance.
- In Rio in 2018 Alpha joined the inaugural TFF Academy, where we worked with 250 fellow changemakers from around the world.
Today, WHYFARM is going global with their promoting agriculture among children through hands-on courses, poetry, and of course comics featuring AGRIman. Alpha has also had the chance to deliver his message through keynotes at TEDx Amsterdam, the United Nations ECOSOC Youth Forum in New, and more.
Seeing Alpha and his team at WHYFARM evolve over the years is the most rewarding sign that the initial spark back in 2013 developed into a dedicated mission to educate the next generation to engage in solving global food and ag challenges.
Do you want to support WHYFARM and TFF? Until the end of this week, you can support both organizations with one single donation to our crowdfunding campaign to help validate our mission to empower a new generation!